|
|
Change Your Life! |
Teen gives birth to baby after long abortion fight in Mexico |
|
News
|
April 16, 2000
MEXICALI, Mexico, APR 15 (AP) - A teen-age girl pressured by state and religious officials to drop a request for a legal abortion after she was raped has given birth to a little boy.
Paulina, a 14-year-old from the state of Baja California, delivered a 3 kilo, 500-gram (7-pound, 12-ounce) baby by Caesarean section on Thursday night.
Her pregnancy - and her ultimate decision to give birth - has provoked a furor among human rights officials and feminist groups, who accuse state authorities in this intensely Catholic country of overstepping their legal bounds.
Baja California's governor, meanwhile, has refused to honor a recommendation from a human rights prosecutor that he punish the state attorney general who tried to dissuade Paulina from having the abortion and the doctors who refused to perform it.
Paulina's parents, trembling and tearful after the 30-minute birth in the city of Mexicali, said they would do their best to take care of the boy, named Isaac, but would never forget what the state put them through.
"I am happy because everything went well, but I have a lot of anger," said the teen's mother, Maria Elena Jacinto, who broke down sobbing.
The nightmare for Paulina began on July 31, when a robber broke into her family's home, tied her up and raped her.
Despite the family's intense Catholic roots, Paulina and her parents decided she could not bear the rapist's child.
The law in Baja California - and a majority of other states in Mexico - allows abortion in cases of rape or when the life of the mother or the baby is in danger.
Outside of these instances, having an abortion is considered an offense punishable by one to five years in jail for the mother and 10 for the doctor who performs it.
When Paulina arrived at a hospital for poor people in Mexicali, the chief of obstetrics refused to obey the state's orders to provide an abortion.
During her weeklong stay in the hospital, Paulina was visited by two women who identified themselves as government social workers and showed her graphic abortion videos meant to discourage her from having the procedure.
The social work agency later denied that any of its employees had visited Paulina.
When the teen and her mother complained to state Attorney General Juan Manuel Salazar, the state's highest justice official responded by taking the mother and daughter to a Catholic priest, who again tried to talk them out of the abortion.
Salazar ultimately approved the abortion in October, when it was almost too late under the law to perform it, but the family once again ran into a daunting obstacle. This time it was the hospital director, who warned them that Paulina could suffer a fatal hemorrhage or end up sterile if she went ahead with the abortion.
That proved to be the last straw. Fearing for Paulina's safety, the family backed down, and Paulina prepared herself for the long months ahead.
But that wasn't the end of the story. Enraged by the treatment they had received, Paulina's family presented their situation to the state's human rights prosecutor, who ruled that the officials had cted inappropriately.
The prosecutor recommended that Baja California Gov. Alejandro Gonzalez take action against the attorney general and the doctors at the hospital, and create a fund to help support the child.
But an angry Gonzalez, blaming politics for the uproar, rejected the prosecutor's report. Instead of establishing a fund, the government gave the family dlrs 10,000.
In the meantime, the Baja California human rights prosecutor has turned the case over to the National Human Rights Commission, which is reviewing it.
Among those joining the vocal criticism of the state's behavior are feminist groups, Mexican intellectuals and well-known writers including Carlos Fuentes, Laura Esquivel and Angeles Mastretta.
Nongovernmental groups in Baja California have denounced the "machismo" attitude of officials from the state's ruling conservative National Action Party, or PAN.
On the other side, anti-abortion groups have lauded the outcome of the controversy. Baja California state Rep. Martin Dominguez Rocha, of the PAN, is proposing a change to the state's penal code that would eliminate a raped woman's legal right to an abortion.
|